White Shadows
by Winter Still
Summary: Sora falls into the one world without a heart. RikuSora, AkuRoku
1. Chapter 1

**Summary:** Sora falls into the one world without a heart. [KHII: RikuSora

WHITE SHADOWS: CHAPTER ONE

Sora landed neatly on the cobbled streets of the Bastion, straightening his posture from the curved poise of his somersalt. Behind him, dark wisps of darkness disappated into the lukewarm afternoon air. He turned, briefly, to the sun and thought again upon Riku and Kairi. _I'll see you again._ Donald's distressed quack broke into his thoughts with no apology. Without bothering to aim, he twisted and threw his keyblade, striking a Book Master in the face. The heartless shrieked, but Sora had heard enough of their shadow-tongue through the keyblade to suppress his shudder.

And of course, Donald and Goofy, even as joined in his trinity as they were, heard nothing. The curse of the Chosen.

He made a small sound as the keyblade returned to the curve of his hand, strong and familiar. "On to Merlin's," Goofy yelped happily. Sora smiled close-eyed at his companions.

"Yeah." The wind was a gentle thread that brushed his cheek. He was content just to be with his friends.

"Wait, you guys," Donald quacked out. Sora and Goofy turned as one to see the magician leaning over a heavy-looking tome.

"Whoa," Sora said. He blinked and then rushed forward to join Donald. Goofy wasn't far behind. "What is it," he asked.

"Gwarsh, I dunno. Maybe that heartless dropped it." Sora was enchanted. The book lay on its side, closed, with an embossed heartless symbol nestled in a smooth, velvet cover. The outer layers were red, while the pages were the yellow-gold of age and use. Strange how he never wondered what the book's contents were. Now, his mind ran rampant with the possiblities. "But I don't think you should touch it, Sora," Goofy warned.

"Aw," Sora pouted as he drew back. "Why not?"

"We should take it to Merlin," Donald interjected.

"I'll carry it!" Goofy volunteered.

"You're not supposed to TOUCH it, stupid," Donald responded, feathers trembling in his fury.

"How about you guys go ahead and get Merlin. He'll know what to do." The duck and the dog turned to Sora with admiration shining in their eyes. Sora wasn't surprised. He was supposed to be… Well, he didn't quite know what he was supposed to be, but he was being it right now. "And I'll stand watch so no one touches it."

"That's a great plan, Sora. Ah-hyuck."

"What a good idea!"

"Yeah, I know," Sora replied, folding his hands behind his head with a pleased expression.

Donald quacked his goodbyes and departed, dragging Goofy in his excitement. The oversized dog waved awkwardly at Sora with a resigned expression. The Keyblade Master couldn't help but laugh.

He turned to the book when they disappeared from his sight. It _was_ a beautiful book. …But Donald did say not to touch it. Then again, the Book Master Heartless was relatively new. Sora lowered to his haunches in contemplation. A small chirrup signaled Jiminy's emergence from his pocket. "What do you think I should do?" Sora asked without moving his gaze from the book.

The cricket gripped his top hat in his hands with agitation. "I don't really know, Sora. I've read many books, but never a heartless one."

Sora snorted lightly. "Donald said not to touch it."

"Maybe you should listen to him and wait for Merlin. Merlin will definitely know what to do." If Jiminy had seen Sora's face at that moment, he would have run full force for Merlin's house.

"_Will he_?"

Because Sora's eyes were a dull, lifeless blue with a ring of burnished gold clinging to the irises. "…Sora?" He leaned forward with his hand outstretched for the book. "Sora! Don't!!" Jiminy jumped on Sora's back and tugged at a wayward lock of hair. Hard.

"…ow." The brunette blinked once, twice. "Jiminy?"

"Yeah?"

Sora stood up and Jiminy slid to the ground. "What the hell was that?" he asked as he turned around to glare at the cricket.

"Well, Donald said to wait…"

"So you pull my HAIR?"

"I did call your name."

"My HAIR, Jiminy. That really _hurt._"

"You'll thank me later," Jiminy insisted before disappearing into Sora's pocket.

"Yeah, sure," Sora muttered, unconvinced.

**Chapter One End. **

This fic fits (hopefully) neatly between Roxas' return to Sora, and Axel's death. Oh, come on. Like you didn't know.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary: **Books, in the right hands, are the weapons of change. Especially heartless hands. [KHII: RikuSora WHITE SHADOWS: CHAPTER TWO 

"Sora, mi'lad, Donald and Goofy called on me, but I have to admit I have not the slightest idea what they are trying to tell me."

"Merlin!" Sora exclaimed with delight. "We just found this book a heartless dropped. We didn't know what to do with it, so we called you."

The wizard stroked his beard in contemplation. "Heartless, you say? How very curious."

"So what do you think we should do," Donald quacked as he jumped excitedly.

"Mmm… Perhaps…" Merlin reached into his sleeve and pulled out his wand, tracing obscure patterns in the air. Goofy leaned over to Donald.

"Gwarsh… what do'ya think he's doin'?"

"Shhhh!" the duck responded, attentive only to Merlin's hand movements. A small whirlwind began to ruffle the gold-tinted pages of the book and soon after it slowly levitated, caught in the gust. Merlin directed the small whirlwind with his wand, and, catching Sora's gaze to make sure he followed, he began the way back to his house.

---

After a few hours of contemplation, Merlin decided he had enough. "The weary mind finds naught but trouble," he quipped when Sora protested.

"But--"

"We'll pick it up in the morning, boy, when we're all properly rested."

Sora sighed. "Alright…"

But even as Donald, Goofy and Merlin began to prepare for bed, Sora continued to leaf through Merlin's books, hoping for some sort of clue. There had to be something! Deciding that the heavy tome he was reading was useless, he stiffly stood and carried it to the birchwood bookcase. "I wrote most of those books myself." Sora started and dropped the book in his hands.

He spun around. "M-merlin," he noted guiltily.

The wizard bent and lifted the book with one hand, placing it seemingly randomly in the bookcase. "I know how impatient you must feel, Sora. But take it from someone who knows; it would be much better if you took a break. Try to get some sleep and your mind will return refreshed and the book can be picked apart anew."

The brunette looked to where the book lay innocuously on the large table; Merlin's circle of power the only sign of possible danger. But what harm can a book do? "Yeah…" he mumbled. "Yeah, you're right." Merlin smiled in a relieved sort of way as Sora began to prepare for sleep.

"I'll be off then," he said to Sora's jacket-free back.

"G'night, Merlin."

---

But Sora did not sleep for long. He tossed restlessly into the waking world, at an hour where no one, not even Merlin, stirred. Disgruntled, he rose from the mess of blankets on the cot and peered from behind Merlin's door-curtain.

He started when raindrops slithered down his face. The curtain-cum-door was spelled against weather, it seemed. It figures, he thought with a grin. Sora pulled his head back inside and let the curtain fall back into its magically-sealed place.

A wordless siren call

reverbrates and repeats through his heart bone mind. He has no choice. No one could have forseen this. In the precious seconds afterward, Merlin arrives too late. Sora touches the book. It blooms open, red leather a thin scarlet petal under mountains of gold dust.

The world shakes on its foundations

Merlin pulls out his wand. "Sora! No!!!"

The brunette trys to turn, but looking away from the book is like tearing skin and he screams in agony, loud and long and wakes everyone. Merlin begins an incantation, tip of his tongue, as tendrils of darkness rise from the leather-bound pages and grip Sora's throat. The screaming stops (abrupt so abruptly) and then Sora is gone.

---

"Oh no no no," Merlin says, but inside his head he can hear Arthur and Lancelot and oh no no no. He's always had to lead, always had to be the one the books and the knowledge and the beard (though that took the least time to attain). He's met himself before, a man with everything he has and everything he had but this one frowned and yelled and was generally a mean person and he decided he wasn't going to be that way --- oh no no no. He was going to define himself by using himself and why is he thinking about this now when he should be saving Sora?

Sora, the key who carries the key.

Quite a 'pickle' you've gotten yourself in, the frowning Merlin says from his other universe, mocking as per usual.

I'll fix it. You know I can.

Yes, of course. Don't make me --- us--- look like an imbecile.

So he readies seven levels of spells for unlocking and a few that break unbreakable bonds just as he realizes that Goofy is staring at him like he's Santa come early and Donald is running around in random spurts of energy, not even bothering to maim English but quacking and honking like a duck with half its neck broken.

He can feel the Other Merlin thinking something nasty and mean, like he mostly always is but he ignores all of them and focuses because for the nth time everything depends on him. So he loads, aims, and fires just like in those Westerns where the good guys always win…

a strange sucking noise, like a vacuum you forgot to turn off but didn't notice

gets hit with the spells he cast. They fling him across the room into the bricks and with the last of his conciousness he calls Mickey. Of course, the last thing he hears is not the squeaky reassurance of the calvary on the way, but the gruff pronoucement of Sodding Imbecile.

Just what he needs.

----

Roxas remembers an encompassing warmth as he stumbles into his old skin. He falls to his knees in the World that Never Was; the familiar cobblestones greeting him with a brutal kiss. As the drizzle mists his face, the sense of belonging subsides, and he realizes he is alone.

Except, he is not. There is a sound. When he utters it, his heart pauses and he thinks that the sound has stabbed him with its beauty. He says it again just to be sure.

Axel.

And he is. That he's never heard anything that felt so much like home.

----

Sora does not exist. He does not breathe or blink or smile. He doesn't do much of anything. He is in Nowhere, which is were non-existing things go, in a place that does not exist.

Sora cannot see or feel or think, but suddenly, he does. He gasps into Life, leaving Nowhere with the beginning of a breath. Underneath his fingertips, warm sand shifts. Above his head, the sun blazes. Palm trees and ocean waves.

He hears (hears!) the quick pace of feet behind him and turns. "I'm Wakka, yeah?" A tall man-boy says with dark skin and orange hair. He tries to speak, but cannot remember the science of it. Was it words or lifetimes?

"Hey, Sora!" Behind Wakka stumbles a thin girl of about seventeen. She waits until she catches up to Wakka before she leans close to him and speaks. "I'm Selphie. Remember me?"

"Re… memb… er." It almost sounds right.

Selphie's face turns from hopeful to a pitying-sadness, but she doesn't get another word in before two more join them, cries of 'Sora' warm on their lips. "I'm Tidus, do you remember me?" The blonde who shouts this is pushed aside by a red-haired woman-child.

"Tidus, he's recovering from an illness. Don't pester him!" And in a much gentler voice, she asks him, "Do you remember me, Sora?"

Sora…

Sora…

Sora!

He closes his eyes when the world tilts too close, and feels slight pain when his face hits the sand. "Sor-a. So-ra. Sora."

Wake up.

---

Donald shook Sora's limp body roughly, screeching all the while. "Wake UP, Sora!"

Goofy attended to Merlin, gently easing the wizard into a comfortable sitting position. "Oh dear," Merlin mumbled when he awoke.

"Gwarsh, what are we going to do?" Merlin looks at Sora, inanimate and seemingly asleep; looks at Donald, worried and fearful and this time not afraid to show it; and looks at the book, which has closed again of its own accord.

He wants to close his eyes, but he doesn't. "Go find Leon and Cid, please."

---

He doesn't know how long he has been here, on this island. Long enough to get to know Selphie and Wakka and Tidus and Kairi. Apparently, he's been sick for a long time --- a year and a half. No one knew what it was; they all thought he would die. Sora absorbed it all with the same dazed quality he took in everything else.

He doesn't know how long he's been on this island, or if there is even anywhere else to go. The days don't seem to pass at all. Everyone here knows him from Before. Before the sickness, before he woke up, before he forgot.

They've become vaguely familiar figures in his life: Kairi, Wakka, Tidus and Selphie. And even though he knows nothing of who he is or who they are, he knows something is missing.

Something. But he can't remember enough to know what it is.

---

Leon listened attentively to Merlin's explanation while Cid paced the room. "Then something pulled him into the book; I didn't see what."

Cid grunted, and then started overturning books and shelves, as if searching for something. The Book, however, remained untouched and Cid gave it generous breadth. "Is there anything else?" Leon queried.

"Sora was the only one who touched the book. I don't know how he managed past the boundary…" Leon smirked self-deprecatingly. " …I should have known."

"I don't get it," Goofy complained.

"The hell?" Cid shouted. At his feet, a small section of the floor blurred in and out of focus.

"What could it be," Merlin murmured curiously.

Cid backed away slowly, gratified when the blurring space did not follow. "Someone wanna do something about it?"

"It's a heartless!" screeched Donald, drawing his wand to zap it into non-existence. But Merlin was faster. In words fast like the sound of raindrops in summer, Merlin's spell sprang forth: a wispy, colourless thing. The duck-sorceror halted, paralyzed by his idolatry. The blurr seeped into reality.

"A black fucking feather," Cid incredously injected into the heavy silence.

"No," Merlin corrected. "A bonafide penquill made from a black feather."

More silence. All the eyes in the room were focused on the newly revealed quill. "…Like a crow?" Goofy asked.

---

Sora eyes were closed, but he could see the sunlight through them, illuminating the web of veins crisscrossing in his eyelids. He wasn't sleeping because he couldn't remember what sleeping was. Kairi slept and Wakka. Selphie and Tidus too. He closed his eyes and lay on his back (warm sand shifting under his weight) and pretended when the others did the same. Except, he was sure they weren't pretending. In fact, he was sure that…

He was sure… there was a place other than here a place --- He sat up, unheeding of the others who slept in various states about him and tilted his head. Sora could hear something, except that he couldn't. It was just past the range of his ears, like the faint fluttering of wings.

"Yes," Sora said, with a smile. A cloud passed over the sun and in that moment Sora saw the true image of the isle. Wakka and the others transformed into shadowy, amorphous figures with feelers and claws. Underneath his fingertips, the sand turned to ash. And the sea--- but the cloud had passed. Destiny Isles was again the pristine home of dreamers. The brunette stared at the lithe, tanned bodies that surrounded him in sleep. He nodded, once, in satisfaction and curled up on the warm, rough sand.

The sun was bright today; he should get some rest.

---

No one had really expected him to come. In fact, no one (but Mickey) had even thought of him coming because his name was synonomous with 'Things Not to Say Around Sora.' Out of sight, out of mind.

So when he did come, silver-haired demon busting in wild-eyed and tight-lipped, everyone (except Mickey) was surprised. Like, oh-my-god-this-is-so-not-happening surprised, not to be confused with Sora's… situation, as it were, because something was always happening to that poor kid.

"RIKU?!" Donald and Goofy screeched.

"That's Riku?" Cid and Leon countered.

Merlin had gone out for some milk, and so wasn't avaliable for comment.

"Sora," Riku replied, the one word presented like a treasure kept close to the heart, the last syllable like the slamming of a door, pulling it back from public eye. Sora, he said, and everyone (including Mickey) knew. With little ceremony, Riku was led to the book that had taken the keywielder Away.

Riku's legs trembled, and he slumped to his knees, yet the boy was still tall enough (and the book was on a leverage short enough) for him to still touch, without stretching, the bubble Merlin had cast around it. He made a sound that was tangled in something no one wanted to name, something that was slowly wrapping around them all, noose-tight: defeat. The wizard returns then, placing the white convenience-store bag on the table. The rustling of the colored plastic as he sets it down is the only sound in the room.

"M'boy," Merlin began, gently touching Riku's shoulders. "Maybe you should take a seat."

---

Axel pauses, the sea-breeze pushing his hair behind him as he turns to face it. He thinks, again, of all the things he will say to Roxas. He grimaces because some of them are quite cheesy, and he hopes Roxas beats him unconcious before Axel makes a fool of himself. They are friends, afterall, and friends do each other small favors like that.

Axel is aware that his behavior is done toeing the line of suspicious, and, if he lingers any longer, his errant acts will fucking hopscotch over the line, piss on it and then call everyone over to see the stain. So, it is with a heavy… lack-of heart (further aided by lack-of Roxas), that Axel lets the darkness pull his unresisting body to the World that Never Was.

---

Chapter Two End.


	3. Chapter 3

WHITE SHADOWS: CHAPTER THREE 

Had Riku known that Sora would mean this much to him, that he would willingly burn and freeze and die just for that lightly freckled smile, Riku knows that he would have run when he had the chance. He would have hidden behind his mother's knees like a proper five-year-old, instead of greeting Sora politely. He would have ignored the boy's eyes, would not have looked at the boy's face at all, because he would have known that the small child hid sirens in his gaze. But he does not regret meeting Sora. Does not regret having vivid dreams of Sora's arms wrapped around his neck, and Sora's smile teasingly close to his face as he pulls both of them deeper and deeper into a twilight sea. He will not regret Sora; he refuses.

Strange how he cannot regret meeting Sora, and yet, given a choice, would choose never to meet him at all. Riku was never one for convention.

----

Axel runs his fingers through his hair with a curse. He hates the rain. He hates the World that Never Was. He hates being without Roxas. All three and he is ready to kill small, defenseless animals. Wait, he's always game for that. Well… he's ready to… do something predictable and stupid. Because looking for Roxas was something no one expected from a Nobody, expecially _this_ Nobody. Axel decides that it's high time he does something that lets him vent his rage a bit.

Demyx is on some mission or other, and his fists are feeling exceptionally lonely. Axel decides he will go where he has avoided going for a while (who can tell the time, travelling between worlds where the sun is always setting or where summer never ends.) He's not saying goodbye, because he hasn't given up just yet, and the normal numb cavern where his heart could have been actually feels empty, like something is missing, and this has never happened before. But Axel keeps going strong, the fire that never goes out, and pretends (pretends!) it isn't there, because it really isn't. It _can't_ be.

He finds himself where he thought he should go, but thought he would never reach, distracted as it were. He had hoped Zexion or some other bastard would miraculously find him, slap him on the back, and tell him something along the lines of: _Glad you're back, lazy ass. What happened? Got lost? Stop slacking off, here's another 'errand.'_

But he's already here and if he turns and runs he'll look like a total fucking coward. Which, except for when the occasion calls for it, he isn't.

So Axel stands there, feeling a little bit like an idiot, and thinks about the last thing he said to Roxas. He hates that he's not even sure Roxas heard him, because if Roxas did and kept walking, Axel would be fucking PO'ed. All this work for an asshole that couldn't give two shits for him anyway. He scuffs his boot with a kind of vengenence on the slick cobblestone, remembering how he stood on them long after Roxas had left him behind, and how his feet (among other things) ached for days after.

He isn't even sure why he's there, in that stupid alleyway, where the memories bounce off the walls and make him hallucinate. He can almost see Roxas' back as he turns away, with his stupid hair all over the place and he thinks he sees Roxas in the here and now, walking toward him with the biggest smile on his face, naked as the day he was made. Wait, that never happened. The fuck?

"_Roxas_," and his voice is too fucking hopeful, because this vision, this perfect, beautiful vision isn't real, isn't his. He resolves, right then, to suck it up. He's going to find Roxas, by Kingdom Hearts, and he is going to chain the small nobody to his fucking bed. That'll show the little shit.

"Axel," he hears from a voice that is wispy from disuse and sounds painfully like Roxas.

"Stop fucking around up there," he orders his brain cells, delivering them a vicious dose of headpalm.

"Axel," the vision says again, and the face looks cross. "Give me your fucking coat. I'm freezing."

It becomes very, very clear to Axel that his un-life has just produced a fork in the road. He can either a) swear to himself to take a nice, long nap, and stay out of the sun for a while, because it's obviously not doing him any good; or b) believe that this little naked fruit in front of him is actually that stupid twerp named Roxas, because, really, no one else could manage to be such a complete ass while standing naked in the rain.

Axel sluggishly takes off his coat, while his mind catches up with the rest of his body, and hands it to Roxas, who snatches it right out of his hands and pulls it on. "Took you long enough."

"The fuck?" he slurs as Roxas primly zips the coat all the way up, muttering thanks for it's length. "Roxas, you're---" Axel rushes forward, pulling Roxas into a tight, bony hug. Later, when Roxas brings it up, Axel will pointedly stare at something of no interest and change the subject. But now, right now, he grips Roxas like he has always wanted to hold Roxas, as if Roxas could sink into the vacancy of his chest and never leave. His eternal replacement for what he doesn't remember wanting in the first place.

And he wasn't fucking crying, alright? Rain gets everywhere, especially when you give your coat to your… person-you-don't-want-to-see-die.

Axel doesn't want to let go, doesn't want to return to the world where Roxas is painfully not-his, where this is a dream, and where he is soaking wet with no purpose, but Roxas pushes him off eventually, mumbling something about 'missed you too.'

He rubs the back of his neck in the awkward silence that follows, still deliriously happy but somehow not because, well, he _was_ a Nobody. And that was just fine.

----

Selphie had given Sora one of her spare ropes 'in case he felt up to it.' It being the enormously disorganized play-fights that occurred between Tidus, Wakka and Selphie with disturbing frequency. Sometimes all three would fight at the same time in a surprisingly bloodless melee. Sora fingered a polished wooden handle as he watched them play, move through their attacks as awkward teenagers would. Jerky movements.

Sora continued to rub at the handle.

---

"Tell me everything," Riku orders, hair in his eyes as he looks up at Leon.

Leon's eye twitches. "Merlin knows more than me. He was actually there."

Riku's knuckles tighten on the armrests of the chair he sits on, but none of the tension is found in his voice. "Tell me what you know."

"The book was dropped by a heartless," Leon began reluctantly, forcing down his pride with the thought of Sora being rescued. "Sora, Goofy, and Donald found it. Merlin carried it over here. Sora touched the book and disappeared."

"How did Merlin get it here?"

"He used a spell." If the shadows in the room lengthened in an untimely manner, Leon pretended not to notice.

"Was the protection spell always on it? Even before Sora touched it?"

"Merlin cast the spell when he first saw the book."

Riku pressed his fingers together, and was silent. Leon turned to go. "Thank you," Riku called to him, receiving a casual wave in response.

---

"I don't like it," he heard Leon's voice say.

"Well, what the fuck do you want me to do? It's not like Merlin can just send him home, y'know," Cid responded gruffly, in tune with the busy sound of his tools clinking in the background.

"That may be… but I don't like leaving him alone. No one can say that he's Sora's Riku." Riku self-satified smirk was thankfully covered by the tome he was pretending to read. "Didn't Donald tell us he had been locked in Kingdom Hearts?"

Cid snorted, but the clanking of the tool he was using stopped. "So what's yer point?"

"Wouldn't it be safe to say that it isn't entirely impossible the Riku we see now isn't the _actual_ Riku, if such a Riku even exists anymore?" Riku could envision Leon's furrowed brow and determined eyes, begging Cid to see reason. Reason. If Riku had seen it, would Sora still be here?

"What exactly are you suggesting?" Riku decided that he knew the potential climate enough for now. He called back the shadow, and it slid between allyways and beside cobblestones like dark water. Discretely, Riku shifted his foot so the darkness could rejoin him unseen. Merlin's house was too full of light for it too go completely unnoticed, but perhaps they would deem it passing fancy, or ignore it altogether, far more attuned to larger movements of heartless.

How dare he summon such a thing in Merlin's house, of all places? The apprentice to Yen Sid, The Prophet. Yes, Merlin had light, but Riku had darkness and pain and years of unfulfilled longing, and it was stronger. Strong enough to save Sora from what ever grip the book had on him.

Strong enough to take on the world.

_(weak enough to take down himself)_

---

Sora stared into the sun until he thought he would go blind. Maybe he already was. Maybe blindness wasn't dark but light, stark bright light that consumed your eyes until you died.

He thought he heard something again, a low murmuring, but he could pinpoint where it came from. That island too small to be populated by even a monkey. The sole inhabitant the long curving trunk of tree where no bird dared perch.

He can't remember anything about before. Before he got sick, before he fell asleep, before he forgot. Except now he thinks he can. Phantom images dance before him as he makes his way to the large sandy rock. A neck shadowed by hair blue-silver. Eyes, hands, legs. Separate but somehow belonging to a sameness. He passed through the wooden shack when the sensations began. Goosebumps started up his arm at the stroke of long, non-existant fingers. Crying, not crying, tears that fell into his heart, that he kept as his own. But they weren't his… they weren't…

"Sora?" Kairi. Her voice was pitched high and strained.

Sora did not stop walking. He pushed open the door to the other side, where the beach awaited him… and that island, that called to him. "Sora, where are you goin', ya?" Wakka this time. Somehow his voice was warped, unrecognizable as Wakka, but the words made it his.

He took his first step onto the warm, yielding sand. "_Sssoraah!"_ Sora still did not turn, even as he felt something cool and gauzy touch his ankle; it didn't feel the same as the phantasms, somehow. It circled his leg up to the knee and tugged him, and he fell elbow-to-wood.

"Hey man," Tidus called to him as he rolled onto his back, above his face as it were. "So clumsy you trip over your own feet. Just like old times, huh?"

"Yeah," Sora replied calmly, even as the gossamer length of …something… slowly retreated past his calf, his ankle and was gone. "Clumsy me."

"C'mon, let's go play blitz, yah?"

"Sure," he lied, smiling to seal it. He rose to his feet 

(_what is the phemonema of rising from a deep sea…)_

and really, he had felt things, heard things, seen things that wouldn't have made sense that didn't make sense now as he looked at them from afar, like a snowglobe in his hands.

_(or waking from a deep sleep…?)_

He had been blinded, surrounded by that sharp white light that envied him his eyes, and had almost taken them. What pried the teeth away from his face? What had saved him?

_(he hears it again on the wind, a voice with no sound)_

but he knows that it is _his_ name the voice calls. _Sora,_ it says, _Sora,_ in the voice he knows and does not know. The one thing he couldn't remember enough to forget.

He blinked, suddenly aware (_aware! awake! alive) _that Wakka, Kairi and Tidus (_the fiends in question)_ all stared at him with eerie concentration. He struggled to regain himself, to keep realization behind the shutters of his eyes. "Ready to go?" he asked.

They blinked, as one autonomous being, and Tidus replied with a sunny (_the sun with it's jealous hands and teeth)_ smile. "Yeah, let's go." Sora joined Them as They tromped back to the main beach. Although it seemed not so much a voluntary 'join' as an 'escort', with Tidus and Kairi flanking him, and tall, muscled Wakka behind.

When they reached the edge of the beach and the sea, Wakka produced a blitzball. Sora, for once, decided to participate. He and Tidus on one side, Wakka and Kairi on the other.

"Hey," Sora murmured to Tidus as they crouched down next to each other. "Where's Selphie?" He struggled to grasp a picture of her in his mind. Blue eyes? Hazel? She had been shorter than Wakka, right? Everyone was shorter than Wakka.

"Selphie went home," Kairi called, although she wasn't all that close, thirty feet at best, to have overheard.

"Why?" There it was again, They all shrugged as one, with no signal between the other. Without warning, Wakka threw the ball into the air, between the two sides, and Kairi and Tidus lunged for it. Sora circled around the two, following Wakka's movements.

There was something in the air.

Tidus and Kairi began a waterfight over the ball, until Tidus, distracting Kairi by a well-aimed squirt to her face, sent the ball flying to Sora. "Catch it!!"

Sora reached up, taking a step to do just that, when, despite his efforts, the ball flew right over his head…

… and right into Wakka's burly arms. Sora smiled and sprinted, leaping at the last moment to land on Wakka's chest, pushing the taller boy into the water. Wakka released the ball and Sora held it up triumphantly.

"Good catch," Tidus crooned. Sora smirked and tossed him the ball. "From the top!"

Kairi and Tidus returned to their previous face-off position. "Sora," Kairi called. "C'mon, you have to toss the ball up." Sora hesitated.

"But what about…" he turned to where he had caught the ball, surprised to see no one there. "Wasn't someone…"

"Sora!" Tidus called impatiently.

"I'm coming; I'm coming," he called back as he turned back, jogging to the pair. His feet causing ripples that cast a white headband further out to sea.

CHAPTER THREE END.

Ohoho. Here it comes. Riku's creepy when he's still half-possessed by the darkness, isn't he?


End file.
